J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Perspective lectures c.1809-28 > III. Diagrams after Samuel Cunn's ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lecture Diagram: 'Euclid's Elements of Geometry', Spherical Trigonometry, Proposition 22 c.1817-28

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lecture Diagram: 'Euclid's Elements of Geometry', Spherical Trigonometry, Proposition 22’ c.1817-28
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lecture Diagram: ‘Euclid’s Elements of Geometry’, Spherical Trigonometry, Proposition 22 circa 1817–28
D17008
Turner Bequest CXCV 38
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 489 x 694 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN | TURKEY MILLS | 1817’
Inscribed by Turner in black watercolour ‘1’ and ‘2’ within figures and in red and black watercolour with various initial letters and numbers within diagram
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘38’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Prepared in connection with his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy, Turner’s diagram is based on an illustration from Samuel Cunn’s Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (London 1759, Spherical Trigonometry). It illustrates Proposition 22 on Spherical Trigonometry: ‘In any spherical triangle A B C, if the angles at the base B and C be of the same affection, then the perpendicular falls within the triangle; and if they be of a different affection, the perpendicular falls without the triangle’.1 There is a sketch of the left diagram in Turner’s lecture notes.2
1
Cunn 1759, p.302.
2
Turner, ‘Royal Academy Lectures’, circa 1807–38, Department of Western Manuscripts, British Library, London, ADD MS 46151 X folio 21; see also 5 verso.
Technical notes:
Peter Bower states that the sheet is Super Royal size Whatman paper made by Finch and Thomas Robert Hollingworth, at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent.1
1
Notes in Tate catalogue files.
Verso:
Blank, save for an inscription by an unknown hand in pencil ‘21’ bottom left.

Andrea Fredericksen
June 2004

Supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Revised by David Blayney Brown
January 2012

How to cite

Andrea Fredericksen, ‘Lecture Diagram: ‘Euclid’s Elements of Geometry’, Spherical Trigonometry, Proposition 22 c.1817–28 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2004, revised by David Blayney Brown, January 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-lecture-diagram-euclids-elements-of-geometry-spherical-r1136731, accessed 18 April 2024.